Kasama Project: Walk the Revolutionary Road with Us
Posted by Mike E on September 20, 2008
In April, we initiated the Kasama Project at our first national conference. We are now organized in beginning collectives in several cities, with a network of contacts in a dozen places nationally. The following was written quickly for this summer’s SDS convention, and refined since then. We expect it to evolve as we work on our common language and raise our level of unity — and as we hear your comments and questions.We urge you to circulate this statement in creative ways. And we invite you to join us: Many deeds cry out to be done.
[print-ready pdf version]
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In a world at war, the times cry out for a new direction. The existing left has been unable to speak to our times, let alone provide real-world solutions. Activists, organizers and dreamers have too often relied on old formulas from bygone days – and far too many have simply given up on radical change. A serious, creative break needs to be made to escape this impasse.
Kasama is a communist project for the forcible overthrow and transformation of all existing social conditions. We are open to learning, unafraid to admit our own uncertainties. At the same time, we will not shrink from what we do know: the solutions cannot be found within the current world order or the choices it provides. We are for revolution. We seek to find the forms of organization and action for the people most dispossessed by this system to free themselves and all humanity.
To take this road, we need a fearless, open-eyed debate, discussion and engagement. We need fresh analyses of the rapid changes shaping the world around us. We need to sum up a century of revolutionary strategies and attempts, victories and defeats – instead of the conventional wisdom and facile verdicts that paralyze our movements. We need to re-imagine a radical politics that can take life among people and move mountains. We need a movement that can listen, as well as speak.
REVOLUTION: rethinking the unthinkable
We intend to identify those fault lines where radical thought and action can emerge. We want to go deeply among the people to prepare minds and organize forces for revolution; for a global transformation of human life; for the urgent rescue of the biosphere from capitalist destruction; for the radical dismantling of the U. S. empire – its military, its nuclear weapons and torture camps; for the uprooting of intolerable racial inequalities and the archaic brutalities of male supremacy; for the final liberation of humanity from the restless, soulless rule of capitalist profit making!
Help launch our new organizing and theoretical projects. Let’s reconceive as we regroup for coming storms. The end of this world is the beginning of the new. Everything will change. How it changes is up to us.
Come walk the revolutionary road with us.
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Kasama: Analysis and Discussion
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Kasama Threads: Discussion forums
email: kasamasite (at) yahoo.com
Keith said
The statement says: “We seek to find the forms of organization and action for the people most dispossessed by this system to free themselves and all humanity.”
My question is: what makes the people “most dispossessed” revolutionary?
That is not Marx’s view.
There is no scientific basis that I know of for the view that the “dispossessed” are revolutionary. Marx called the people who have been thrown out of the production process (that is the only way I can understand “dispossessed”) “Lumpen” (lumpen translates roughly as: scum).
The worst legacy of the 60′s is the Panther’s lumpen theory (continued by the RCP: “those with nothing to lose but their chains”) combined with a general third worldism.
Marx shows why the workers (those involved in the production process) are revolutionary. To rehearse Marx’s arguments would take some time but if you look at his mature works (Capital, Grundrisse, theories of surplus value)you will see that for Marx “Capital” is a social relationship between workers and privately appropriated social wealth/power that keeps expanding/growing. Workers are revolutionary because they are the active living part of that social relationship and they can overturn that relationship as they become conscious of their position in the society.
Those who are dispossessed have very little ability to do much because they are outside of the social structure (definition of dispossession).
So what do you mean by dispossessed?
Why abandon Marx’s theory about the revolutionary nature of the working class?
land said
In regard to dispossessed.
I didn’t think it was only referring to the working class in terms of Marx’s theory.
Why are you critical of the Panthers.?
Dispossessed is kind of an odd word to use.
land said
Thinking about it. What makes it interesting is that is does give a picture of the people curious about revolutionary politics who for one reason or another are drawn to a more radical analysis.
Comments said
In moving beyond the Nine Letters I think we need, among other things, to reexamine the history of this country and find ways to challenge a culture of mandatory patriotism (instilled by the playing of the national anthem at ball games, the recitation of the pledge of allegiance in schools, etc.) with a materialist assessment of the past. Mike Ely has done some very good work towards this end.
We need, in my opinion, to rethink our relationship to the American Revolution and both the powerful mythology surrounding it, which deeply affects the masses, and its real historical content. The RCP position has been, in my observation over the years, almost wholly dismissive and negative. The positive/”progressive” aspects of the thought of the bourgeois revolutionary leaders, in the context of their times, have been generally ignored. For the RCP it’s been enough to observe the obvious (the revolution consolidated the power of slave-owners) and to treat the revolution as a kind of cruel joke.
There’s been a kind of delight in trashing the “founding fathers” as though this, like flag-burning, will draw a dividing line and shock those influenced by patriotic brainwashing into seeing the need for revolution. Avakian has been particularly keen on depicting Thomas Jefferson in the worst possible light. There’s a kind of iconoclasm here, just as one sees in his denunciation of Jesus as someone we “wouldn’t like very much” if he were here today. But it requires historical distortion.
See the talk on Jeffersonian democracy in the last issue of Revolution; “Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy.” I’d listened to the tape a couple times when it came out in 2006, wincing at points, thinking some of it really required refutation. But it wasn’t worth my time to try to transcribe it in order to comment on it. I did mention Jefferson a little in a talk with a friend in the RCP, who said, “Well we have a different position on him,” referring me to the Avakian talk. Again, Bob’s words = RCP line.
Now the talk’s available in print: “A Major New Work by Bob Avakian”! The critique of this “work” might be an entrée into a discussion of how to relate to this country’s past, the revolution of 1776-1781, and its leaders including Jefferson. So let me take a stab at that, in an unsystematic way, since I’m pressed for time.
Shouldn’t we acknowledge that Jefferson was an extraordinary figure? Isn’t it important to recall that Jefferson is the only president out of 43 who was not, and did not claim to be, a Christian? In a famous letter to his nephew, he urged him to “question with boldness even the existence of God.” He dismissed much of the Bible as myth, describing the ethical content of Jesus’ sayings as a “diamond” in a “dunghill” of unbelievable narrative. He more than any U.S. leader, including Thomas Paine, embraced the French Revolution. Even as his colleagues’ enthusiasm waned after the public executions of the French king and queen, he maintained a revolutionary perspective.
He asked, has “ever such a prize [been] won with so little innocent blood?” He declared that while he regretted the deaths of innocents, “rather than it [the French Revolution] should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is.” How many other north Americans in positions of influence, or persons of influence anywhere in the world in the 1790s, had that level of political consciousness?
Jefferson was a rebel. Yes, he was born into a landowning, slave-holding family. But he questioned everything, in a systematic way, discarding Christianity, loyalty to the crown, devotion to precedent. He repeatedly expressed his support for the right of the people to rise up in rebellion. In 1776 he wrote, “The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations are removed.”
In January 1787, referring to the Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts, he wrote, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” This is significant. He’s saying “It’s right to rebel.”
Without mentioning these aspects of Jefferson’s thought, Avakian characterizes him as follows:
“Jefferson consistently acted in the interests of the aristocratic large landowning and slaveholding class in the southern United States, in opposition to the interests of small farmers—and, of course, this was also in opposition to the interests of that group of individuals who most glaringly did not have independence economically, or in any other way: the slaves, who did not actually count as individuals in the eyes of the slaveholders.”
Jefferson, that is to say, while publicly a champion of the American yeoman (small farmer) was really a consistent supporter of slaveholders’ interests. What evidence does Avakian adduce?
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 that doubled the size of the United States.
Avakian doesn’t mention that Jefferson’s intention was merely to purchase the port of New Orleans, which had recently passed from the Spanish to the French. At the head of the Mississippi River, this port was vital to the provisioning of parts of the U.S. west of the Appalachian Mountains. Since Napoleon’s France was in need of cash, it is quite understandable why Jefferson would engage in negotiations for a transfer of sovereignty over New Orleans. The expansion of slavery was not the motive.
U.S. negotiators James Monroe and Robert Livingston planned to offer as much as $ 10 million for the port and did not expect that the French would offer the entire Louisiana Territory to the U.S. for $ 15 million. The deal fell into their lap.
Jefferson was in fact ambivalent about signing the agreement with France. His Federalist opponents argued that it was unconstitutional, and he himself questioned whether he as president had the authority to authorize the transfer. But he did, and the treaty was ratified by Congress.
Did he do so “primarily…to spread the slaveholding system?” I doubt any historian specializing in this period of U.S. history would impute that motive. It’s as ridiculous as proposing (as the RCP did following the line of Chinese dogmatists in the 1970s) that Confucius was upholding the slave system versus the rising feudal system in ancient China. It just doesn’t square with historical reality.
Actually, eleven years after leaving office Jefferson strongly opposed the 1820 “Missouri Compromise” that expanded slavery beyond Louisiana (which became a state in 1812) to what became the state of Missouri within the territory purchased from France. He wrote that it “filled him with terror.” Does Bob Avakian understand or care about the fact that, actually, the spread of slavery terrified this historical figure he wants to attack?
It is well known that Jefferson was deeply conflicted in his own mind about the institution of slavery, which he had of course grown up with as a central institution of Virginian life. He questioned it, the way he questioned a lot of things. In 1769 Jefferson, as a member of the Virginian colonial legislature, proposed that the colony emancipate all slaves. His first draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned Britain for waging “cruel war against human nature” by “captivating and carrying [Africans] into slavery in another hemisphere.” He attacked slavery in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) and many other writings. His personal letters indicate a genuine sense of guilt and unease about the existence of slavery in the new republic. At various points he called slavery an “abominable crime,” “moral depravity,” and a “hideous blot.”
On the other hand as we all know he owned about 100 slaves, selling them from time to time to reduce his chronic debt. We condemn his hypocrisy and that of his class in general! And for that matter, all slave-owning classes and all their slave-owning members no matter what their contributions to our collective planetary civilization over many centuries. And all feudal lords, binding people to the land as serfs! And all capitalists, exploiting wage labor (although among the latter of course you have Friedrich Engels with his share in his father’s Manchester textile firm). We’re opposed, in principle, to those who exploit other people, even though we know that our species as it’s evolved over thousands of years has produced its most significant thinkers (to we communists!) from the exploiting classes! How could it have been otherwise?
Shouldn’t we pause to note the contributions of those whose thought and actions inspired advances in what for shorthand we can call human “freedom”? Marx’s doctoral dissertation was an appreciation of Democritus, the product of a slave-owning society in fifth-century Greece. Should Marx have just dismissed the Thracian as a slave-holder, and not bothered to examine his thought? Should Abimael Guzman, who specialized in the thought of Immanuel Kant, have dismissed that colossal thinker as a member of the bourgeoise?
Avakian continues: “with regard to Jefferson himself, not only his economic status but also his political fortunes, including his election to the presidency, depended on slavery, and in particular the ‘three-fifths’ provision in the Constitution of the United States…”
This refers to the three-fifths provision of disproportionate electoral representation adopted in 1787, which in turn arose out of the 1783 constitutional provision assessing taxes for the states on the basis of population. Had slaves not been counted, the southern states would have been taxed far more lightly than the non-slave states in the north. Understandably, northern legislators would have liked to have counted all slaves and free people as the tax base. By a political compromise (that Jefferson didn’t have much to do with), the southern states wound up paying two-fifths less for about one-fifth of their populations that would otherwise have been the case.
Historian Garry Wills whom Avakian cites argues Jefferson might have lost the presidential election of 1800 if the slave states hadn’t been given disproportionate representation as a result of this provision of 1787. But UCLA historian Joyce Applebee contends that Jefferson would have narrowly won the vote even without the three-fifths provision. To say that Jefferson’s election “depended upon slavery” and insinuate that he was personally happy about slavery is more than a stretch. It’s a matter of “fixing” historical information around a desired “spin” on the past. Marxists should not do this. It ultimately damages and discredits us.
Avakian refers facily to “Jefferson and the slave-owning class in Virginia” as though they are a unit, and suggests that Jefferson’s reference to slavery as a “cruel war on human nature” was really just a cover for the defense of American colonists’ economic interests versus those of the British slave-traders. This is simplistic dogmatic nonsense. Communists in this country need to break with it. The premise of historical materialism is that class societies succeed one another. They don’t do so inevitably, as a result of somebody’s plan or discernible logic, but looking back we can see some general patterns.
In the three thousand years or so of written human history, relatively few great minds whose thoughts are worth our have study expressed a commitment to what we conceptualize as communist goals. Jefferson didn’t. He was trapped in his own historical situation. But he expressed ideas that fed a continuum of revolutionary thought affecting subsequent bourgeois revolutions and even communists. (Think of Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 declaration of Vietnamese independence that cites the 1776 U.S. document). We need to uphold was is valuable in Jefferson, while rationally and dispassionately noting his class-based limitations.
Or else we wind up engaging the U.S. past from a standpoint of posturing contempt mirroring that of the religious fundamentalist who sees only good and evil in the world. In the real world everybody is complicated. Jefferson was certainly complex, brilliant, manic depressive. His sexuality was affected by the institution of slavery (as anyone in his situation would have been). But to say he was a representative of the slave-owning class and leave it at that is to confess analytical bankruptcy. Real communists can do better than that. We can assess our own histories, asking who has concretely advanced the establishment of the conditions for human happiness and autonomy, and how. The frontal attack on anybody enmeshed in past class systems is no more rational than the Taliban blasting of the buddhas of Bamiyan. There’s no point in assaulting history. It is what it is. The point is to trace the lineage of what we now uphold, and in my humble opinion, Jefferson is a part of that.
Andy Carloff said
Greetings,
While researching Maoist and Leninist ideology online, I found myself at your webpage and reading the delightful ideas of revolution. However, I don’t share your same type of thinking in Maoism.
The political party, in our century and those past, has either been the people’s greatest enemy, or our greatest traitor. Liberal governments prohibit torture in their constitutions, and then fly prisoners to other countries to expose them to burns, hot iron, and other inventions of the Inquisition. A shoplifter of a $2 loaf of bread serves more time in prison than a CEO responsible for stealing millions from the public. America and Europe engaging in wars that actually make the civilian populations less safe. And everywhere, there is the rule of Capitalism. At one point, the land beckoned humanity, told us to come to it, to pull wealth out of it, and to make it our own — but today, it simply says “No Trespassing. Violators will be prosecuted.” This is the situation of our factories, our mines, our farms, and our entire world. No longer do men and women work these lands, because someone who owns them doesn’t see enough profit in it. Instead, they starve in the street, waving a sign that says “Will Work For Food.” This is the language of our modern era: right next to empty fields, there are those begging to farm and create their own sustenance.
This has been the tragedy committed by all Liberal, Authoritarian, Fascist, and Monarchical governments. But when we look at the political parties that have tried to oppose this, the record is even more dismal. The Labour Party of Britain threw their laborers into the Capitalist war. During World War 1, the Socialist Parties of France and Germany were supportive of their own governments. It was worker-of-the-world slaughtering worker-of-the-world! In the 90′s, the Hungarian Socialist Party took public assets and privatized them — once again, the reds are looking out for the cause of Capitalism. In the 1970′s, Portuguese Communist and Socialist Parties worked together to rewrite the nation’s constitution, which urged the state to “socialize the means of production and abolish the exploitation of man by man.” After a few years, though, Conservatives gained power and completely scrapped the “ideological language,” — language which existed only as an abstract, unworkable concept, and not something that was ever attempted to be brought into place.
And when I look at Authoritarian Parties of Socialism, from the Chinese Communist Party, to the one in Cuba, or Russia, or Vietnam, or Laos. We should be very aware that these places are the worker’s hell. The right to organize, to form unions and strike, is completely prohibited. And those who do, anyway, are executed or imprisoned and given harsh sentencing. According to Marx, I have been alienated by the means of production by not being able to work it. But in his governmental systems, I have become even more alienated — I can’t unionize, I can’t strike, I can’t speak, I can’t read, or write, or think. And now I’m told that this is freedom. Whether it was Mao or Xiaoping, Lenin or Stalin, these political parties have always hunted and abused the people. Why would the Bolshevik Party, under Lenin’s rule, abolish the right for Jews to use the Hebrew language? Why would the Chinese Communist Party, under Mao’s rule, burn books and prohibit certain styles of music? It is an absolutely maddening system. In every way, the good, common people have been disarmed by a government that seeks to become their new Capitalist class. I do not look to Maoism as a solution; it is just another attempt to use “the right ideas” in enforcing government.
If you are genuinely interested in the workers, the common people, and our struggle for liberty, then look to the past where we have succeeded. Workers in Barcelona, 1919, went on strike and achieved the first National Eight Hour Day. Strikes in Syria overthrew French rule there in the 1930′s. Similar activity of unions in Algeria accomplished the same goal by the 1960′s. Polish trade unions went on strike and eventually achieve self-governing autonomy in 1989 from the Soviets. And much earlier, in 1917, even the General Strikes of St. Petersburg convinced the military to defect to the side of the revolution — it was striking that brought down the tzar, and Lenin’s coup against the worker-managed society that brought up a new one. General Strikes against governments and Capitalism in Bolivia, New Guinea, India, Korea, and every spot of the globe. This is what has brought governments crashing to the ground; this is what has bent the Capitalist at their knee.
The workers’ union, and the General Strike. This is the tool that has achieved our liberty in the past, and it will be the tool the achieves it in the future. There is a piece of yours I read: “We need to sum up a century of revolutionary strategies and attempts, victories and defeats – instead of the conventional wisdom and facile verdicts that paralyze our movements.” Well, there is a quote that fits political parties perfectly: “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” (Anthony Robbins) If we know what has worked, and what certainly doesn’t, why would we waste any more time on Mao or similar butchers of the people? Their revolutionary party never changed anything — it only brought about a new, Capitalist class that continued to exploit and oppress the people. Of course Mao banned unions and worker organizations — he fears us, because he’s one the greatest Capitalists of history, and we’re the only thing that could’ve stopped him.
One quote of yours was interesting: “To take this road, we need a fearless, open-eyed debate, discussion and engagement. We need fresh analyses of the rapid changes shaping the world around us.” I am ready to engage in any discussion on creating liberty — that is, real, true freedom, that allows you to work the ground and be the possessor of what you’ve created, that makes every person their own governor and liberator — we need Anarchy.
Please, we should discuss Anarcho-Syndicalism as a revolutionary path for creating a society managed by the workers, without the state or the capitalist. I patiently await your reply…
Andy Carloff,
Tell No Lies said
Andy,
Thanks for posting your thoughts here. Much of what you have to say is familiar to me from my own long years in the anarchist movement. To introduce myself, I am a former anarchist and a Kasama supporter but I do not consider myself a Maoist. I think the Chinese Revolutionary experience is an incredibly rich one and that Mao made important major contributions to revolutionary theory and practice as well as very costly errors. My basic view is that while we have much to learn from this and other historical experiences (including those of the anarchist movement of course) that we are fundamentally confronted with having to create something genuinely new.
There is much to respond to in your comments. I’ll leave a lot of that to others here. One of the things that strikes me in your comments though is the failure to confront the repeated defeats and failures suffered by the anarchist movement. The idea that this is a history we can look back to to easily discover “what works” is refuted I think by the mass graves of anarchist workers killed in Spain. If the Russian, Chinese and other experiences of socialist revolutions in the 20th century ultimately produced repressive political regimes that led to the restoration of capitalism, the anarchist movement bears another legacy, that of heroic uprisings ending not in “workers liberty” but in bloody defeats. This is not to disparage those heroic uprisings, but rather to suggest that our responsibility to those who fought and died before us is to be ruthless in learning from their mistakes.
What this all suggests to me is that the answers to the question of what it will take to realize the classless stateless society that we here call communism are not just lying around to be picked up from one tradition or another.
We have roughly a century of experience now with several variations on Lenin’s vision of a revolutionary vanguard party. Like a lot of technologies that are a hundred years old it has revealed a lot of serious limitations, but I would suggest that a serious and all-sided analysis of both the positive and negative of those experiences is the best place to start in trying to conceive of new organizational forms appropriate to new conditions but also informed by the lessons of previous experiences.
One of the complications that confronts us is that while we know the dangers that the Leninist conception of the party poses, many of the reasons that gave rise to it in the first place are still very important considerations. The need for an organizational form that could concentrate the consciously revolutionary minority and survive state repression, that could ensure unity in action if not in thought, that could sum up its own defeats and develop new analyses and change course under conditions of great tumult — these were and remain pressing needs. They are precisely why if you look at the early history of communist parties around the world following the Russian Revolution that you find them filled with former anarchists from Lucy Parsons to Mao Ze Dong himself, committed revolutionaries who had learned through bitter experience that relatively open forms of mass organizations like unions, no matter how militant and revolutionary minded most of their members were, could not actually “bring the capitalists to their knees” on their own.
I’m not here to try to convince you of the neccesity of repeating the experiences of the Leninist party. As I’ve said I think we need something genuinely new. Rather I am suggesting that you make as cold and unsentimental an appraisal of what anarcho-syndicalism has actually won in any lasting way as you think you have of the experiences of the Chinese Communist Party in order to properly appreciate the contradictions and difficulties that lie before us.
In any event, welcome to this discussion.
Tell No Lies said
Andy,
If you are relly intereste din this discussion you might want to check out a piece I wrote a long time ago when I still considered myself an anarchist. It was republished here a while back, but feel free to add your two cents should you be so moved:
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/the-historical-failure-of-anarchism/
n3wday said
Andy, are there by any chance articles you would like to see posted for discussion here? If you have any in mind that are well thought out we would be happy to consider them for posting.
Miles Ahead said
Well, I just read TNL’s “The Historical Failure of Anarchism”, which I consider to be a most serious analysis. Honestly my head is still swimming and once I catch my breath, need to go re-read it.
But just a small part:
Several years ago I read Emma Goldman’s “Living My Life” (Vol. 1 & 2), plus writings of Alexander Berkman. Emma Goldman is usually summarily dismissed by lots of Marxists, and I think both she and Berkman had valuable things to say. But I usually felt that her anarchist ideas tended to be idealistic. On the other hand, Emma Goldman, while maintaining her criticisms of the Bolsheviks, was a stalwart supporter–in theory, but mostly practice–of the Russian Revolution. After being deported from the U.S. back to the Soviet Union (when it was in its infancy) she was one of those who pointed to those “authoritarian aspects and potentialities” — most especially in terms of the manifestations and ramifications of a developing bureaucracy, while still carrying on some dialogue with Lenin–and even though she was essentially put under “house arrest.” And I also think that Emma Goldman, while having that liberatory spirit, was incorrect in thinking that by virtue of the Bolshevik Revolution, people were going to be liberated in one-fell swoop, and was seemingly in denial of many of the life and death contradictions the Bolsheviks faced.
So I’m curious — how do Andy or TNL or any of the rest of you weighing in on this discussion see bridging the gap between an anarchist such as Emma Goldman and the Marxist-Leninists-Maoists, or if this is even possible?
And when Andy talks about Anarcho-Syndicalism is that a reference in a more sweeping way, or is he considering even the “divisions” in A.S., i.e. the “socialist anarchists”, “collective anarchism” or “anarcho-communism.” Or are there real differences? When I think of Anarcho-Syndicalism, I guess I have a pretty limited view, because I automatically think of The Wobblies and also Eugene Debs.
Auxilio.
Miles Ahead said
sorry, forgot to turn off the blockquote after TNL’s.
P. Radclif said
I think that there can be some thing that should be taken from the Anarchist as well as Leninist Movements. I think that Anarchist have put a lot of their emphasis on the stopping of bureaucracy which can be a good thing, but as Tell no Lies puts it “the anarchist movement bears another legacy,that of heroic uprisings ending not in “workers liberty” but in bloody defeats.”
Yet we must also take a very critical look at our own history as Leninist and Maoist, our attempts at socialism have also fell apart, though we may all argue different reasons to why it is that this has occurred (I would like to hear peoples perspectives on that). We do have a bloody history which needs to be examined. I think that Zizek puts it the best way in the first page of his “Presents Mao on Practice and Contradiction” We as Communist look for the “moment of the Fall”, we basically look at are history and then cut it off at the point in which we no longer agree. Stalin, Lenin, Mao, even picking at Marx himself.
We need to look at our history as Communist and take away from it but we can not be so dogmatic as to not even look for anything positive out of other Radical and Revolution movements, including Anarchist. The other day there was an article post on this site called Lessons of SLAM a Culture of Resistance http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/lessons-of
-slam-a-culture-of-resistance/ where this discussion of Anarchism and Communism being to work together is brought up.
Andy Carloff said
Greetings,
And thank you for bringing me into the discussion….
[quote]We have roughly a century of experience now with several variations on Lenin’s vision of a revolutionary vanguard party. Like a lot of technologies that are a hundred years old it has revealed a lot of serious limitations, but I would suggest that a serious and all-sided analysis of both the positive and negative of those experiences is the best place to start in trying to conceive of new organizational forms appropriate to new conditions but also informed by the lessons of previous experiences.[/quote]
Lenin’s vision changed all throughout his life. He supported elections, campaigning, and the right to vote for every single moment that he was a revolutionary — but upon becoming a head of state, these things suddenly became identified with Capitalism and Imperialism. I’m suspecting that his change of opinion had much more to do with the fact that he lost the vote of the people. Russian workers had decided on a Revolutionary Socialist government, but Lenin made up his mind: the biggest threat to the Russian worker, is the Russian worker.
For instance, look at Lenin’s text “Democratic Tasks of the Revolutionary Proletariat,” Proletary, No. 4, June 17 (4), 1906. Here, he advocates the right to vote, but when the Russians voted for a different Socialist, they became his mortal enemy. Once he was in office, though, his ideology was completely reformed. Anyone who had gone along with him from the beginning, like the Kronstadt sailors, or the Socialists, were repressed, imprisoned, and executed. To quote the Anarchist Peter Kropotkin, “If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Czar himself.” Considering the evolution of prison system from the Tzar to Lenin, Kropotkin hit the nail right on the head.
In this respect, I don’t regard Lenin as anyone with new ideas, or a genuine revolutionary. I consider him exactly as his acts would make you consider him — he’s an opportunist politician, who signed the death warrants of those who supported his party and brought him to power.
[quote]One of the complications that confronts us is that while we know the dangers that the Leninist conception of the party poses, many of the reasons that gave rise to it in the first place are still very important considerations. The need for an organizational form that could concentrate the consciously revolutionary minority and survive state repression, that could ensure unity in action if not in thought, that could sum up its own defeats and develop new analyses and change course under conditions of great tumult — these were and remain pressing needs. They are precisely why if you look at the early history of communist parties around the world following the Russian Revolution that you find them filled with former anarchists from Lucy Parsons to Mao Ze Dong himself, committed revolutionaries who had learned through bitter experience that relatively open forms of mass organizations like unions, no matter how militant and revolutionary minded most of their members were, could not actually “bring the capitalists to their knees” on their own.[/quote]
Actually, the union has done quite exactly that. In 1919, the Anarchist-Syndicalist CNT-FAI organized a General Strike against Capitalism and the state. And it succeed. It brought about the first, national eight-hour workday, as well as releasing hundreds of revolutionaries from prisons. This was in 1919, after violent and brutal police repression, and without so much as a single dime dropped into anyone’s campaign fund. Mao gained political power of China in 1951, but he didn’t enact the Eight Hour Day until 1960. Even with complete political power over a country, unions are still stronger, more effective, and more capable of granting the worker our rights. Yes, Mao had the philosophy of the “People’s Liberation Army,” with millions of soldiers, and endless prisons — but all of the political power in the world did nothing to bring about the Eight Hour Day. Workers’ rights in general languished, suffered, and many were ultimately abolished.
[quote]The idea that this is a history we can look back to to easily discover “what works” is refuted I think by the mass graves of anarchist workers killed in Spain. If the Russian, Chinese and other experiences of socialist revolutions in the 20th century ultimately produced repressive political regimes that led to the restoration of capitalism, the anarchist movement bears another legacy, that of heroic uprisings ending not in “workers liberty” but in bloody defeats. This is not to disparage those heroic uprisings, but rather to suggest that our responsibility to those who fought and died before us is to be ruthless in learning from their mistakes.[/quote]
[quote]
I’m not here to try to convince you of the neccesity of repeating the experiences of the Leninist party. As I’ve said I think we need something genuinely new. Rather I am suggesting that you make as cold and unsentimental an appraisal of what anarcho-syndicalism has actually won in any lasting way as you think you have of the experiences of the Chinese Communist Party in order to properly appreciate the contradictions and difficulties that lie before us.[/quote]
1917 was the St. Petersburg General Strike that brought down the Tzar. 1920 was the German Kapp Putsch Strike, which brought down a monarchist uprising. 1936, Syrian General Strike ousts French imperialists from the country and creates independence (good thing they ignored Lenin’s ideas about “Imperialism”). Same year, CNT-FAI resists a Fascist Coup — they were ultimately defeated, however, when they agreed to cooperate with Leninists and Marxists (Orwell’s book “Homage to Catalonia” covers it very well). Even after being ousted from Spain, the CNT-FAI Anarchists were the most important veterans and organizers of Anti-Fascist resistance in France, Italy, and Yugoslavia.
1946, the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny, coupled with massive strikes, creates national independence of India. 1968, French General Strike topples federal government. 1984, Uruguan General Strike removes a military dictator. 1989, a Polish General Strike overthrows Soviet rule in Poland, leading to national autonomy after the “Polish Round Table Talks.” 2007 Guinea General Strike, 2009 French Caribbean General Strike, 2005 Bolivian General Strike, etc., etc., all have toppled corrupt governments or have cut off the tentacles of the Capitalist monster. Even going back to Ancient Rome, when the plebeians would engage in the Secessio Plebis — two thousand years ago, and even then the General Strike brought the Roman Empire to its knees? This is definitely the tactic I want to use, just because it works.
Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement may have been a “bloody defeat,” but it created a lasting social harmony. MLK was influenced by thinkers like Gandhi, and Tolstoy, both of whom had openly advocated Anarchist organization for the purposes of achieving social justice (check Tolstoy’s book, “The Kingdom of God is Within You”). In fact, MLK may have gotten some of his ideas from a Canadian General Strike following World War 1 — being beaten in the streets, attacked by police, and thrown into prisons was what brought about the right to organize for workers in Canada. All liberty, it seems, requires a little bit of suffering, of course. But, I am mostly concerned that the suffering I’m enduring will just create another dictatorship, in which case I was only betrayed. But, the people aren’t betrayed by their governments, so much as we betray ourselves. If this type of social organization has worked in creating more rights for workers and the people, then why persist with political parties?
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Andy Carloff
Andy Carloff said
Wow, this XHTML is god-awful…
Tell No Lies said
Andy,
Just to be clear, I wrote the piece when I still considered myself an anarchist. Not surprisingly it convinced many that I really wasn’t and eventually I too came around to that view. The article was an attempt to confront what I regarded as a profound ossification of anarchist theory and general refusal to confront historical defeats and failures honestly but from within an anarchist framework. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that the framework itself was inadequate. I could very easily write an article today called “The Historical Failure of Marxism.” But such an article would not have the same meaning precisely because Marxism subjects its failures and defeats to ruthless critical analysis in ways that anrachism really doesn’t. In short I wouldn’t be saying anything that many Marxists haven’t said already. This is not to say that many many Marxists do not have such a critical view of their own history, only that the Marxist criticism of the failures and defeats of the Russian, Chinese and other revolutions is much much richer than any comparable anarchist literature on Spain.
I’m not particularly interested in arguing here over Lenin’s character. I simply think that if you don’t take his positions, whether right or wrong, seriously as flowing from a commitment to human emancipation you are going to fall into facile dismissals that only serve to deprive you of the insights to be gained by treating them as sincere. A book that you might want to check out on all this is Victor Serge’s excellent “Year One of the Russian Revolution” (its availiable online at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1930/year-one/index.htm ). It was very important in forcing me to rethink my views of Lenin which were very close to those that you express here. As you probably know Serge was an anarchist who went over to the Bolsheviks but who was ultimately forced into exile during Stalin’s rise to power. The Trotskyists often lay claim to him, but it would be a big mistake in my view to see him through that lens.
Finally, I do not deny the power of unions or general strikes to win demands or have an enormous impact on societies. I do deny their ability, in isolation, to overthrow capitalism and bring about a classless stateless society. They are tools in a toolbox, very useful for sometthings but not for everything.
Andy Carloff said
@n3wday…
Sure. I might consider submitting something. Where would I send it to?
@Miles Ahead….
As an unbelievable revolutionary force of anarchism, both Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman cannot be beaten in their enthusiasm. But as theoreticians go, I would choose Mikhail Bakunin. From Chapter IV of “Marxism, Freedom, and the State,” he wrote, “…the International [Marx's organization] only fights old tyrannies in order to establish new ones, and that in order worthily to replace existing absurdities, it wishes to create another!” Authoritarian, Statist Communism is just another form of Enlightened Monarchy, and all monarchies are the same. The ruler, once imbued with the right ideas, will be able to create the proper social order — whether those ideas are tradition and heritage, a religious order, a heavenly mandate, or Marxist ideology. And also in the words of Bakunin, chapter 3 of the same text, “It is true that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy…” As such, I consider Anarchism and any form of authoritarian government as opposites, no matter what inspires that Authoritarian government — whereas, in contrast, the more libertarian the government, the better.
Many of the ism’s are often cited in place of each other, even when reading “educated scholars.” But I try to draw back to the original root-meanings of the words. Syndicalism is from the French, for “Radical Unionism.” Anarcho-Syndicalism is just the practice of organizing unions for the purpose of overthrowing government, or compromising its laws to the will of the people. So, it’s really just a tool, and as Marx said, the General Strike is our lever. Anarchist forms of Socialism, Collectivism, and Communism are just different theoretical models for the distribution of wealth. Collectivists, “To each according to their contribution.” Communists, “To each according to their need.” Socialist is really just a broad term for anyone with anti-capitalist ideas and sympathy for worker miseries; so, Anarcho-Socialists really could have either distribution method.
@P. Radclif…
There is a significance that needs to be examined behind all of this, though. Whether you are looking at the Free Territory of the Ukraine in 1920, the Paris Commune in 1871, the Autonomous Shinmin Region in 1930, or Anarchist Catalonia in 1936 — these were egalitarian, free societies. The utopian dream of socialists and anarchists alike. High class restaurants were turned into working class hospitals, factories and fields were seized spontaneously by thousands of united workers, and food was always provided for the people. In one famous incident, we see exactly how different Anarchist-Socialist and State-Socialist ideas work in practice. Quoting from “Workers Power and the Spanish Revolution,” by Tom Wetzel…
Marxists believe that the workers are smart enough to know they’re being exploited, but not smart enough to organize society according to their needs? I do not understand this. Workers know their terms of work better than anyone else, and I can’t imagine a top-down form of Socialism ever liberating them.
Andy Carloff,
Andy Carloff said
Greetings again,
There are no insights to be gained from Leninism if it is one thing in 1906, another thing in 1917, and then finally a completely different thing in 1924. The only insight to be gained is that politicians are creatures of deception. John Locke, Rousseau, Plato, and Aristotle — I’m certain that many of them were insincere and prejudiced. But despite this, I was still able to gain an extreme amount of insight from their works. If I’m supposed to gain insights from his works, all I’ve found were contradictions and lies, each specific to Lenin’s situation at that time. And if I’m supposed to gain insights from his life, the only thing I can think of is this: do not overthrow a worker-managed society in favor of marxist-enlightened dictatorship. Kerensky may have been a Liberal Socialist, but at least he let unions organize, seize industries, and manage affairs themselves, which is Real Socialism.
If you’ve read Plutarch, you’ll have a million more insights than anything you could possibly have read by Lenin. In fact, there’s a character that Plutarch covers in [i]Lives of the Great Romans and Greeks[/i] — Pisistratus. A Greek politician, who claimed to be the defender of the common laborers. One day, he gauged out his own eyeball, and claimed he was attacked by the wealthy, Capitalist class. The people voted to give him guards to defend himself, and then he used the guards to make himself a dictator, and then prohibited freedom of speech, the right bear arms, etc.. Sounds exactly like Lenin: “Counter-revolutionaries are everywhere trying to overthrow my dictatorship of the proletariat, so I need to cut back on civil rights for the general population.” But that’s a political lesson from over a thousand years ago, and Leninism has made this failure its creed. So, whenever I hear Maoism, Leninism, or Stalinism, a bell rings in my head that makes a sound like “Pisistratus-ism.”
The most effective tool for revolution shouldn’t be in a toolbox, but in your hand! There is a difference between authoritarian and libertarian socialism — not just in what they accomplish, but in their direction end up. Statist Communism has never created liberty, or anything remotely resembling liberty. The idea that Statist Communists are “preparing the world for Communism” is equally absurd — after all of Stalin’s preparation in Russia, the fall of the Soviet Union should’ve landed Russia into a stateless, classless society. But, no, none of that happened. Instead, Russia became an unconstitutional, capitalist, statist, rogue state of the world. Thanks for preparing the proletariat to enter their new world, Lenin. After some seventy years of Socialist preparation, and only ending up with authoritarian Capitalism? That doesn’t sound like a failure — it sounds like it was working in the direction of authoritarian Capitalism. It sounds like giving the means of production to a political party is as bad as giving it to a capitalist class. The possession of this wealth has always corrupted its owner, whether that owner was left-wing or right-wing. This is the lesson that I take — that when a few own everything, it is Capitalism, even if it calls itself Communism!
It is even moreso my enemy, because it commits blasphemy against the Social Revolution. It convinces the people, that Communist Revolution only means prisons, mass executions, and war. So when I talk to them next time about using unions to fight Capitalism, they can say, “No thanks, Mao. I like classical music too much. That, and keeping my family alive.” The greatest deterrent to appealing the worker of industrialized nations to Socialism are the faults of political parties. Explaining the differences of class interests are easy. But they become difficult when the last person to explain them was also the world’s greatest killer. There is nothing that can disperse people like violence, and nothing has achieved this like Maoism or Statist, Authoritarian Communism. And in the words of Mikhail Bakunin, “…there is no revolution without the masses…” ["The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State," by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin, first published in 1871, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY.]
Authoritarian Communism has not only failed in creating its objective; it has succeeded in recreating and boulstering the power of Capitalism. But cooperative and voluntary efforts at creating liberty have given us at least something. They are the source of virtually all of our liberties and opportunities. More than that, in more than one case, they have overthrow the state and the capitalist system, only to create the most egalitarian society imagined. This was done in the Free Territory in Ukraine, but they were destroyed by Lenin’s troops for resisting German, Monarchist armies. This free society existed in Catalonia, as well, until they submitted to a Leninist government, which executed and tortured its most active and vocal soldiers. But it was forces of a monarchy that also crushed the Paris Commune, so of course Lenin’s government would crush a worker’s paradise. It is a trend of political government. Quoting Mikhail Bakunin…
My choice in Anarcho-Syndicalism is that it has worked in the direction of creating liberty. Anarcho-Syndicalist societies were beautiful, wonderful places of freedom and workers’ solidarity. Maoist, Leninist, Stalinist, Castro-ist, etc., societies have always been the workers’ nightmare — they have made Capitalism look welcoming, which is why there are so many seeking to flee. Anarchists created liberty, Leninists destroyed it. Anarchists abolished capitalism and created worker-managed society, Leninists fought and destroyed them. Anarchists created the eight-hour day, Leninists banned it. Before we can ask about whether one or the other succeeds, we should really ask another question… are they even really striving towards the same thing?
Thank you,
Sincerely,
Andy Carloff
Mike E said
[moderator note: we moved this topic to its own post, please comment there. This thread is for the Kasama public statement, and we will move/delete all other comments.]